Birthday Auction

I’ll have a birthday party some time in the next couple of months. I’m not sure whether or not I should do another auction this year, or go for something a little more “traditional”. Maybe one of my good good friends will make the decision for me and throw me a party, hint hint. I like having my birthday auctions because they’re always a lot of fun, and it’s a very communal thing: The deal is, the party gets arranged with food and cake and all the rest, but instead of the guests bringing me gifts, they bring stuff from their homes that they’d like to get rid of, and put it in a big pile on the table. I do the same – take a bunch of crap I’ve accumulated over the years and we have a big auction. Once the auction is over, people hand over their cash which (hopefully) pays off the party “expenses” and the remainder serves as my birthday present! It’s a neat little system that I came up with a few years ago, and everyone seems to like it. People who want to can purge their homes of clutter, others who want to add to their clutter can do so, and proceeds go towards my heroine habit. But this year, there’s a bunch of very specific goodies out there in the wide world that I’d love to get my hands on, CDs and books, particularly, and since I’m more hard-pressed for cash than usual these days, the old stand-by “birthday party with hot dogs, cake & ice cream, maybe a movie, with gifts readily accepted” starts looking better and better. Of course substitute hot dogs for something edible, and cake & ice cream with a DQ ice cream cake. What kind of CDs and books am I looking for? I’ll start an ongoing list soon, most of which will likely be culled from my ebay search favourites, if you have any idea what that means. If you don’t I can explain it later.

In the meantime, here are a couple of birthday presents for YOU:

You’ve probably heard of Don Hertzfeldt. He’s the guy who did the indie animated series “Rejected” which toured with Spike & Mike’s Sick & Twisted Animation Festival a year or two back, in which a poor little fellow was heard to say “My spoon is too big.” Well, here’s one of his cartoons that you can view online: http://www.wam.umd.edu/~rui/BitterFilm.htmlIt will take a minute to load, but it’s very very amusing. I just read on Don’s site http://www.bitterfilms.com/ that there will be a tour of Don’s stuff this year. That’s exciting, it really was far and above the highlight of Spike & Mike’s the last time I saw it.

Your other present is Harvey Pekar’s blog at http://www.harveypekar.com/Harvey is a writer whose been publishing his own comic book American Splendor for years. I was first introduced to him on the David Letterman show – he’s quite a character and a movie starring Paul Giamatti (you’ll remember him from The Negotiator, Saving Private Ryan, Planet of the Stupid Apes, and my personal favourite “Veal Chop” from Safe Men) as Pekar is coming soon to theaters, it looks not-to-be-missed. It’s called…are you ready? American Splendor. Anyway, have a look at Harvey’s blog, I personally find it fascinating.

The US dollar is up today – I should really go to the bank and transfer some cash from my US to my Canadian account. But I’d much rather finish working on this drawing of gnomes and then get ready for D&D tonight.

PS – Sam, my friend who works at Videomatica, tells me that Paul Giamatti recently got an account there. I love this town!